Re-engineering Assessment Practices in Higher Education

Encourage critical evaluations of received reviews

In workplace settings, professionals not only need to have proficient assessment skills but they must also know how to deal with and respond to feedback from multiple sources. This feedback can be complementary, contradictory or conflicting. The task of those receiving feedback from multiple sources is to interpret it, evaluate it and to decide how to respond to it. For example, when academics receive feedback reviews on a submitted journal article they will often have to evaluate that feedback and make a decision about what to respond to when they update and re-write the article. Even if all reviewers recommend publication, each might have different suggestions about how the article could be improved. The writer will have to make a judgement about how to respond to these differing suggestions. A key question is, therefore, how can we organise feedback practices in higher education so that they better resemble the way feedback operates in professional practice and in life beyond formal education.

Putting it into practice

Create a group assignment with individual feedback reviews and have groups not only update their assignment using the multiple feedback reviews but also produce a report saying how they addressed the range of feedback ideas they received.

Students respond to feedback they receive from peers by commenting on its quality, for example, by identifying its merits and limitations.

Students produce a rationale for their response to feedback received as when one submits an article to an academic journal and receives feedback

Students might respond to reviews by posing further questions for the reviewers.

Students update their work after receiving the reviews - this is normal practice